Bartholomew Manfredi

1580 (age 41)

Mantua, Province of Mantua, Italy

He may have been a pupil of Caravaggio in Rome: at his famous libel trial in 1603 Caravaggio mentioned that a certain Bartolomeo, accused of distributing scurrilous poems attacking Caravaggio"s detested rival Baglione, had been a servant of his. Caravaggio in his brief career — he rocketed to fame in 1600, was exiled from Rome in 1606, and was dead by 1610 — had a profound effect on the younger generation of artists, particularly in Rome and Naples. Number documented, signed works by Manfredi survive, and several of the forty or so works now attributed to him were formerly believed to be by Caravaggio. The steady disentangling of Caravaggio from Manfredi has made clear that it was Manfredi, rather than his master, who was primarily responsible for popularising low-life genre painting among the second generation of Caravaggisti. Manfredi was a successful artist, able to keep his own servant before he was thirty years old, "a man of distinguished appearance and fine behaviour" according to the biographer Giulio Mancini, although seldom sociable. His Mars Chastising Cupid offers a tantalising hint at a lost Caravaggio: the master promised a painting on this theme to Mancini, but another of Caravaggio"s patrons, Cardinal Francesco Maria Delegate Monte, had taken it, and Mancini therefore commissioned Manfredi to paint another for him, which Mancini considered Manfredi"s best work. Manfredi died in Rome in 1622. Gerard Seghers (or Segers. 1589–1651) was one of his pupils.

Bartholomew Manfredi

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painter

Background

Manfredi was born in Ostiano, near Cremona.

Career

He may have been a pupil of Caravaggio in Rome: at his famous libel trial in 1603 Caravaggio mentioned that a certain Bartolomeo, accused of distributing scurrilous poems attacking Caravaggio"s detested rival Baglione, had been a servant of his. Caravaggio in his brief career — he rocketed to fame in 1600, was exiled from Rome in 1606, and was dead by 1610 — had a profound effect on the younger generation of artists, particularly in Rome and Naples. Number documented, signed works by Manfredi survive, and several of the forty or so works now attributed to him were formerly believed to be by Caravaggio.

The steady disentangling of Caravaggio from Manfredi has made clear that it was Manfredi, rather than his master, who was primarily responsible for popularising low-life genre painting among the second generation of Caravaggisti.

Manfredi was a successful artist, able to keep his own servant before he was thirty years old, "a man of distinguished appearance and fine behaviour" according to the biographer Giulio Mancini, although seldom sociable. His Mars Chastising Cupid offers a tantalising hint at a lost Caravaggio: the master promised a painting on this theme to Mancini, but another of Caravaggio"s patrons, Cardinal Francesco Maria Delegate Monte, had taken it, and Mancini therefore commissioned Manfredi to paint another for him, which Mancini considered Manfredi"s best work.

Manfredi died in Rome in 1622. Gerard Seghers (or Segers.

1589–1651) was one of his pupils.

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